CODE NAME: S. Andrew Swann - The Database
S Andrew Swann's Proposal Item #: SCP-001 Object Class: Keter Special Containment Procedures: There is no means to contain SCP-001 yet found that does not risk a potential ZK Reality Failure event and subsequent destruction of the observable universe. (See: Containment Protocol ZK-001-Alpha) Current procedures are limited to the absolute containment of information regarding SCP-001. No data regarding the nature or description of SCP-001 shall be provided to any personnel with the sole exception of the senior member of O5 Command. (Currently O5-█) All data collected in regard to SCP-001 shall be stored in encrypted form via REDACTED, with the decryption key split into thirds. Each member of O5 Command shall memorize one third, and only one third, of the decryption key. Data shall only be decrypted on a network-isolated eyes-only terminal to be read only by the senior member of O5 Command, and then only after unanimous consent of O5 Command. Leaking of data about SCP-001, through espionage, telepathic leakage, original research or REDACTED must be contained by any and all means available to the Foundation. The senior member of O5 Command, as the one person with authorized knowledge about SCP-001, is the final arbiter on containment. Foundation personnel of Level two or higher who discover data about SCP-001 in the course of their normal duties may be given a Class A Amnestic after debriefing rather than being terminated. This is subject to O5 approval on a case-by-case basis. Description: EXPUNGED Addendum: Containment Log 001-Alpha Date: 01/12/19██ Incident: Documents appear on Internet site REDACTED servers seized and authors traced to REDACTED. Resulting explosion explained as gas leak. Monitoring has not shown any further propagation of documents. Date: 03/31/19██ Incident: Script with possibly compromising information optioned for production by ██████ ████. Pictures. Original scriptwriter REDACTED agents successfully replace script with one re-written without REDACTED. Film is produced with title ███ ██████ and grosses $27 million its opening weekend. Date: 06/19/19██ Incident: Novel outline describing REDACTED submitted to REDACTED by best-selling author █████ ████. Attempt to neutralize author unsuccessful, leading to high profile hospitalization. O5 authorizes the use of Class A Amnestic to prevent more attention to case. Outline recovered and destroyed. D█te: o5/2█/20█z IncIdeN█: FounDAtIon R█searcHe█%20discov %5BDAtttA ExPu██geD%5D Ask yourself if you want to know. If the answer is no, then you need to stop reading now. If you go and report this unauthorized file to your superiors, act contrite, and claim that you only read to this paragraph, you might get away with a Class A Amnestic. If you’re lucky. And if the O5s aren’t particularly paranoid at the moment. So you want to know what SCP-001 is? The first answer is that it is was a placeholder, a theoretical designation for the prime cause, the ultimate reason for all the paranormal crap we deal with on a daily basis. SCP-001 is why we have to deal with omnicidal reptiles, ever expanding rooms, extra-dimensional pools of red goop and consumer products that don’t obey the normal laws of physics. Of course, given that all these things— as dangerous and deadly and just plain insane as they all are— are inherently patternless and self-contradictory, most researchers are convinced that there is no possible unifying principle for them all, much less a common source. They’re wrong. There’s more than one reason that cross-testing is discouraged, and the O5s even look down on excessive cross-referencing of SCPs. The O5s don’t want any one group looking at more than a handful of these things at once, because of what they discovered when the Foundation tried to develop a Grand Unified Theory of SCPs. That research is mostly gone now. Site-001-Alpha was dismantled, scrubbed from the archives, the staff mind-wiped and reassigned. No one left but me, and I wouldn’t know anything if it wasn’t my habit of not trusting the Foundation servers and having my own hidden personal archive the O5s missed in their panic. I was a data analyst at Site-001-Alpha to O5 Command: Don’t bother looking for me, I finished the job you started, the identities of all former staff at Site-001-Alpha have been completely scrubbed from the records, you know as much as they do now. and I participated in the first and only attempt to consolidate all Foundation data on all SCPs. I was in charge of data integrity. And as much of a mess as you might think that was, it was an order of magnitude worse. Forget the memetic SCPs, or the ones that modify their own description, or the ones that seem to only inhabit infospace and slip into the database to wreak havoc. That’s all SOP for anyone who works with the Foundation’s network, just a matter of scale. Worse were the completely inexplicable, unexpected changes in data Sorry, that’s wrong, even though I can’t help thinking of it that way. It isn’t a change in datawhen reality is shifting to match. I don’t know a lot about the internals of the software we used, but I know that part of it ran outside what we think of as the “real world.” And, at first, everyone thought that the audit trails it produced were some sort of bug. However, it became apparent that the nature of the software, its purposeful isolation from the narrative-affecting SCPs, allowed it to record something far more important. It’s not visible to you, or the O5s, or even to most of the SCPs we deal with, but the Foundation— and by extension the entire universe— is in a state of constant shifting reality flux. SCP files appeared and disappeared from our database with alarming regularity, and the SCPs referred to, to all appearance, appeared and disappeared along with them. Not just SCPs, but personnel, whole sites, and entire decades of the Foundation’s history would be re-written, seemingly at random. And our own memories, and all external research would confirm that “objective” reality matched the current version in our database. One of the researchers told me that it was as if we were seeing the effect of something like SCP-140, only much larger in scale. Yeah. Something a lot like SCP-140, and infinitely larger in scale. I don’t know who did the analysis, and if I did, I wouldn’t say. She’s probably a lot happier not knowing about her own discovery. But she looked at what vanished and what appeared, and what subtly changed in the records, and she found the pattern, the drift toward darkness, toward narrative coherence, toward a plot… Everyone who works any length of time at the Foundation knows the universe we live in is a seriously fucked up place. Those of us who still believe in God tend toward serious ambivalence about his handiwork. But we found out that there is a God, and it is SCP-001. And it’s a bunch of horror writers. Addendum: Emergency Containment Protocol ZK-001-Alpha O5 Eyes Only Enter Decryption Key Decryption Key Accepted Note: Containment Protocol ZK-001-Alpha carries a non-zero risk of creating a ZK Reality Failure event. Use should only be authorized in an attempt to mitigate an end-of-the-world scenario or the imminent destruction of the Foundation. Research at Site-001-Gamma has conducted narrative analysis on SCP-001's changes to the observable universe. Conclusions are that SCP-001 consists of multiple entities showing cognitive patterns that are indistinguishable from human, and that these entities are therefore susceptible to memetic effects. Since prior experiments have shown information feedback via the SCP data warehouse, a possible method of attack and or control has been developed. Protocol ZK-001-Alpha, when initiated, will cause a software viral insertion of a variety of memetic agents into the SCP database which, through the observed information feedback, should expose SCP-001 to the memetic effects of these agents. Protocol ZK-001-Alpha consists of three stages: # Memetic agents inserted to promote calm and/or well-being # Memetic agents inserted to promote sleep, unconsciousness or catatonia. # Memetic agents inserted to cause death. Given the nature of SCP-001 and our limited interaction with it, it is not possible at this time to safely test Protocol ZK-001-Alpha, and it is unknown if the universe can continue to exist without interaction with SCP-001.